Having DVD's for sell at the theater would be exactly like going to a concert and buying a CD as you leave. Your adrenaline is still pumping, you're like, "WOW! That was the greatest ever!" And you're more willing to part with your money to take a little bit of it home with you, just to keep the feeling going.

By the time a movie is on DVD, I've had time to reflect and think, "Yeah, it was good... but was it another $20 good? I mean, it'll be on Starz in a few more months, or I'll just add it to my Netflix queue."

I'm all for paying people when they provide something of value... but quite honestly, when I go to a linked news story, and it requires me to register for even a FREE account before I can read it, I generally hit the back button and either a) find the story somewhere else, or b) do without.

What happens if you've read an article, which they've automatically charged you for, and you feel that you were short changed because it sucked or didn't deliver what it promised? Do you get a refund? Do you get to peruse the article's contents before you agree to make the payment? That's how it works when I purchase a magazine or newspaper at a newstand. And at least then I get a physical object that I may keep, pass on to someone else, or discard--that's my perceived value. An online story that I just "bought" (rented) is useless to me.

It's a hard thing to balance... to have a franchise as popular as Duke Nukem (esp. with the hype behind Duke Nukem Fornever), which direction do you go? On the one hand, it has to be GOOD or you risk disappointing your legion of fans, on the other hand, it has so many fans, the game coulda been "Duke fartin' on a snare drum" and it would have made millions. Had the developers not started over every time a new 3D engine came out, maybe they could have released SOMETHING.

I don't quite get why viewing Hulu content on something other than IE/Firefox/Etc can be hurting them at all... The advertisements are still there.

People want convenience. Plain and simple. I want to use Boxee/XBMC/MCE so I can watch content on my TV and use a remote to navigate. Using a web browser is not as easy using a remote, and Hulu's site pretty much sucks for that anyway.

If I can't use my 'browser' of choice, then I'm not going to stick around and use their service. Fewer viewers, fewer ad dollars.

They can't get pissed because people want to watch network TV programs for free... They've always been free and ad supported. Because of the internet, this is the first time in broadcasting history that they have a way of tracking EXACTLY how many viewers have seen an advertisement -- and they know this no matter if you use Boxee or Firefox or anything else -- and yet, they want to limit the number of viewers? Ridiculous.

Of course he's right you know. Because before the internet, people had no way of sharing music with each other at all. Nope. Piracy and song sharing were created when Al Gore invented the internet.

What I don't get is... what does Andrew Lloyd Weber have to worry about? Who wants to listen to his "music" anyway? His sales aren't suffering because people are sharing his crap -- his sales are in decline because the only people who care about him are dying of old age.

Never mind the scam of selling the useless protection plans... even the charges for installing software is a ripoff. (This goes for OD, BB, the defunct CC, Staples, etc) They also charge people for "setting" up their computers... Such as accepting the EULA, entering in a user name, setting a password, turn on or off the Vista sidebar... The average cost per action? $29. PER ACTION. And you know what? People keep lining up to pay it. Sigh.

@Matt, I wish I could find an 8 year old Linksys router! The new ones (the round ugly ones) in all the stores around here are not compatible with DD-WRT.

Umm...

The article has a lot to do with Iceland, as that's where the resellers are being made to pay up for the licenses they sold and then have received no payment for... But who has time to read the whole story here, or at slashdot, right?

I think people are missing a big point--The resellers aren't going out and just giving away open source software, they're in business to make money. They still have to put food on the table. They are likely selling "support" for open source software. While they are probably not making as much as they did selling MS products, they also don't have as much to lose if someone doesn't pay. And they don't owe anyone else any money, including the people who originally wrote the software.

So... is it better to pay a third party for support for software they didn't write if they have no connections with the original creators? When they were selling MS products, if there was a problem, it would have been resolved through MS support. But now dealing with open source software, does the company that buys support go through the reseller for support? Or does the reseller refer the end user to a support forum where every other answer is "RTFM"? While one could argue that since it's open source, the end user can just fix things themselves, but in my experience, not every company has a team of developers, and if they do, they're busy working on in-house software. That's the reason they purchase software and support from other companies in the first place.

And why does everyone start bringing up Linux vs. Windows? Most resellers are not selling Windows, but they are selling software (and support for that software) that runs on Windows--ie, Office, Visual Studio, etc. It's typically the job of the people leasing the computers (IBM, Dell, HP) to work out the licensing for the operating systems (whether it's Linux or Windows) at the time of the lease.

Ummm...

Let's see...
RIAA Lawyers set up with jobs in the DOJ...
Now there are laws being proposed to have everyone keep logs of who has access to internet accounts...
Coincidence?

Hey! Didn't Google just get whooped on from privacy advocates for holding onto server logs for more than 6 months?

Another rambling thought... so a cracker gets into your wireless router, and then does something illegal... and then clears the router's logs... How much trouble are you going to be in at that point? Never mind that even if your wireless is locked down, someone can still get on it and spoof your MAC address, so it's going to look like your pc anyway......

What I don't get is... since the time of radio, advertisers have been paying out the a$$ for air time to play commercials that people may or may not hear (or see on TV). With over the air broadcasts, there was no good way to determine how many people actually got the message in the ads. Nielson families provide only a "best guess" of what the country is watching, and it was much simpler when there were only 3 networks...

But with digital streaming -- and no way to cut out the commercials, such as the ones Hulu plays--they know exactly how many times a commercial has been watched... they know exactly how popular a show is... Isn't that exactly what Ad Execs have been drooling over since the dawn of advertising?

Hulu made a big mistake, IMO. What does it hurt to give your content more exposure if it leads to more revenue? I don't even know if Hulu has text or banner ads on their site, because I use adblock plus there, but I know for a fact I've seen at least 2 Target commercials every time I watch the Office.

Side Note: Why all the hating on Silverlight? Just because a technology comes from an evil corporation, that doesn't automatically make it bad. In my experience, Silverlight runs much lighter than Flash. And Moonlight seems to be working pretty well on *nix.

Eventually all business models will give way to newer models. But there will always be hold outs clinging desperately to "what has always worked", no matter how broken it is. Markets change. People's expectations change.

I used to live in an area where the local paper is published just ONCE a week, and to this day, they have no website. By the time the paper would hit the stands most people had already read everything in it from other sources (other newspapers and various sites on the web), there is no reason for them to buy the paper anymore, and sales are declining. I had a talk with the paper's owner one time, asking him if he'd ever consider going on line, his response--"No one is going to pay for our paper if they get it all for free." I tried to explain to him that most of his content was already available online from other sources, and you don't have to completely copy word for word what is in that week's edition--that they could co-exist and enhance each other, that he could be more dynamic and timely with the news they delivered, and even generate new revenue streams online... but he wouldn't hear anything of it, "We're a newsPAPER", he said. They did purchase the domain name for their paper, for two reasons: 1) for their email, and 2) so that no cyber-squatter could get their hands on it.

When businesses ignore their customers' needs they go out of business. Newspapers are no different.

Not that surprising.

"but what's more amazing is that Wal-Mart would make the exact same mistake after seeing what happened to both Yahoo and Microsoft."

I don't really think it's all that amazing. Wal-Mart has never really been a consumer-conscious company. They make decisions every day that totally ignore what's best for the customer and their image. I haven't seen the numbers regarding their online music sales, but with a company that reports profits in the billions every quarter, I'm sure any hit to their online music store will hardly be noticed. Besides, turning off your DRM servers is a great way to get people who play-by-the-book to purchase the same product again and again. Wal-Mart will never apologize and you can bet they will never hand out any type of refund.

I've switched

I was using Firefox since 0.0.63, way back when it was called Firebird. I'm responsible for countless others switching from IE to FF. I was using FF3 since the first beta. But I haven't been happy with FF for a long time now. It is slow, and since FF 3, it crashes constantly on my Linux box (Don't tell me it's Flash, because other browsers aren't crashing). I've been experimenting with Opera and Flock for awhile now, and since Chrome has come out, it's the only browser I use (just got Chromium running in Linux). I would love for Firefox to adapt some of the better features of Chrome -- namely Multi-Process!!! and the Javascript engine.

@Twinrova -- You do know that Google is the single biggest contributor to the Mozilla Foundation, to the tune of ~$60 Million a year, don't you? It may not be "ad-supported" directly, but at the moment, it does rely on Google's ad money to keep it going.